Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg may have pushed Trump towards a TikTok ban

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You already know that TikTok may soon be banned in the US, but did you know that it is possible that Facebook and its co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, may have pushed Donald Trump towards the move?

The news comes from a report from the Wall Street Journal. In it, it details both public and private meetings between the president and Zuckerberg and how after one of Zuckerberg’s dinners in October of last year that senators started to raise concerns about the Chinese technology company ByteDance, which owns TikTok.

At the time of the original report, Facebook told the WSJ that “Zuckerberg has no recollection of discussing TikTok at the dinner.” In a statement to CNBC, a Facebook spokesperson states, “Mark has never advocated for a ban on TikTok. He has repeatedly said publicly that the biggest competitors to U.S. tech companies are Chinese companies, with values that don’t align with democratic ideals like free speech. It’s ludicrous to suggest that long-standing national security concerns — raised by policymakers on both sides of the aisle — have been shaped by Mark’s statements alone.”

Well, that part is believable, because much of this conversation started after TikTokers trolled Trump’s Tulsa rally by inflating the number of signups for people interested in attending the rally.

TikTok has called out Facebook before for its attacks on the service, highlighting Facebook’s attempts and fails at creating a TikTok clone. First in Lasso, and now in Reels. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer noted recently in an open letter, “[L]et’s focus our energies on fair and open competition in service of our consumers, rather than maligning attacks by our competitor – namely Facebook – disguised as patriotism and designed to put an end to our very presence in the US.”

What do you think? Should TikTok be banned in the US? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• TikTok exposed for collecting unique device data from Android users for nearly 15 months
• Facebook is starting to merge Instagram and Messenger chats together in a new update
• Zoom is coming to Facebook Portal, Amazon Echo, and Google Nest
• Twitter is cracking down on QAnon, deletes 7,000 accounts and limits 150,000 more

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.